Global Compassion: Private Voluntary Organizations and U.S. Foreign Policy Since 1939

ISBN-13: 9780195371178 / Angielski / Twarda / 2009 / 256 str.

Rachel M. McCleary

Opis

Aid organizations like Oxfam, CARE, World Vision, and Catholic Relief Services are known the world over. However, little is known about the relationship between these private voluntary organizations (PVOs) and the federal government, and how truly influential these organizations can be in the realm of foreign policy. Indeed since the end of the Second World War, humanitarian aid has become a key component of U.S. foreign policy and has grown steadily ever since. This history of interaction deflates the common claim that PVOs have been independent from the federal government, and that this independence has only recently been threatened.

Global Compassion is the first truly comprehensive study of PVOs and their complex, often-fraught interaction with the federal government. Rachel McCleary provides an ambitious analysis of the relationship between the two from 1939 to 2005. The book focuses on the work of PVOs from a foreign policy perspective, revealing how federal political pressures shape the field of international relief. McCleary draws on a new and one-of-a-kind data set on the revenue of private voluntary agencies, employing annual reports, State Department documents, and I.R.S. records, to assess the extent to which international relief and development work is becoming a commercial activity. She outlines the increasing financial dependence of these organizations on the federal government and the consequences of that dependency for various types of agencies, as well as the often competing goals of the federal government and religious PVOs. As a result, there is a continuing trend of decreasing federal funds to PVOs and of simultaneously increasing awards to commercial enterprises. Focusing on the interplay between public and private revenue, the discussion ends with the commercialization of foreign aid and the factors most likely to influence the future of PVOs in international relief and development.

In this thought-provoking and rigorously researched work, Rachel McCleary offers a unique, substantive look at an understudied area of U.S. foreign policy and international development, and provides a crucial analysis of what this relationship holds for the future.

Recenzje

In early 2010, news of the earthquake in Haiti filled the media, and images of the devastation appeared daily on television.... In this context, Rachel McClearys book took on added value as a framework for understanding the process of giving assistance to people in crisis. But the overall power of the book derives from its long view: its depiction of evolving U.S. policies for international aid and the complexities faced by the private voluntary organizations (PVOs) that often carry out these policies.... A major strength of the book lies in the authors original data and in the extensive tables and figures that make her data readily accessible to the reader....engaging, informative, and worth reading.

O autorze

Rachel M. McCleary is Director of the Religion, Political Economy, and Society Project at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University, and Research Fellow of the Hoover Institution of Stanford University.